OBAMA APPOINTMENT SHOWS UK TRIDENT POLICY IS OUT OF TIME.

OBAMA APPOINTMENT SHOWS UK TRIDENT POLICY IS OUT OF TIME.

NEW US POLICY COULD STOP TRIDENT.

SNP MSP Bill Kidd has today urged the UK Government to reconsider proposals for a new generation of Trident submarines after US president-elect Barack Obama appointed a science advisor who has stated that “in the long run, a "two tier" system in which a few states are allowed nuclear weapons, while all others are denied, cannot persist.”

News of the appointment emerged as it was revealed the UK Government had offloaded it’s stake in the Aldermaston facility which produces nuclear warheads and is now entirely owned in the USA.

In a 2005 article for Arms Control Today John P Holden, a Harvard Professor who has served as chair of the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) stated;

“We also recommended that the United States should begin trying to create the conditions that would make possible a global prohibition of nuclear weapons along the lines of those already in force against chemical and biological weapons.”

And continued to say

“If nuclear weapons roles and dangers are not deliberately and relentlessly made smaller, they will get bigger. ..Now it is time to get on with dismantling our equally obsolete nuclear weapons policies.”

Mr Kidd who has recently attended non-proliferation conferences to express Scotland and the Scottish Parliament’s opposition to Trident, welcomed Prof Holdren’s nomination and urged the incoming US administration to encourage the UK Government to abandon plans for a new generation or Trident missiles.

Glasgow MSP Bill Kidd said;

“The UK Government is heading in the wrong direction.

“With ever increasing costs of maintaining nuclear weapons, higher and higher bills for a new system to be based at Faslane and now the possibility of a new direction in nuclear weapons policy from the United States it is time for Gordon Brown to abandon the UK’s ridiculous intention to build a new generation of nuclear weapons.

“With the sell off of Aldermaston, it is clearer than ever that the UK’s nuclear deterrent is merely an extension of the US deterrent.

“The appointment to a senior advisory position of a respected academic who clearly believes we need fewer not new nuclear weapons is a strong move by the president-elect and one I hope the UK Government is listening to.

“Let’s start ending the two tier system and the hypocrisy of keeping nuclear weapons in some countries but pursuing others who try to develop them by abandoning plans to spend billions of pounds on new weapons of mass destruction.

“Scotland’s opposition to nuclear weapons is recognised around the world. If Gordon Brown will not listen to the people of Scotland who have these weapons on our shores, perhaps he will listen to the next US President.

1. In his weekly address on 20^th December 2008 “President-elect Obama announced his appointment of Dr. John Holdren as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology” (PCAST) http://change.gov/newsroom/blog/

2. Biography of Professor Holdren (2005)
John P. Holdren is a professor of environmental policy and director of the science, technology, and public policy program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and director of the Woods Hole Research Center. He is also president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From 1993 through 2004, he was chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) of the National Academy of Sciences.

3. Prof Holdren's full comments can be found at; http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_07-08/Holdren